This Easter, me and my lovely mum Debbie travelled to Manchester for a long weekend theatre city break, to see ‘Ghost – The Musical’ at the Palace theatre. Whilst in Manchester, we visited many great places, including; the Coronation Street Tour, Hard Rock Cafe, Arndale shopping centre, Manchester Cathedral, Manchester Art Gallery, Manchester Museum, Chinatown, Piccadilly Gardens, Treetop Adventure Golf, and an Easter Funfair at Manchester Central Convention Complex. Please continue reading / viewing to see a detailed description of our travels, with accompanying photography. Hope you enjoy.

Friday 19th April

We arrived in Manchester late afternoon on the Friday. Our hotel was the Britannia Sachas Hotel, located on Tib Street, very central and close by to Piccadilly Gardens.

A tradition of ours, whenever we go to a new UK city (if there is one there of course) we always enjoy taking a few photos in urban Chinatown.

SPOILERS ALERT: On the Friday evening, we went to see ‘Ghost – The Musical’ at the Palace Theatre! I can remember, ‘Ghost’ was one of the films my mum actually bought me as a Christmas present as a teenager, we have watched it together on DVD on numerous occasions over many years. It’s a great story, very much brought to life on stage. Because the 1990 film ‘Ghost’ starring the late Patrick Swayze, Demi Moore and Whoopi Goldberg, is not actually a musical as such, the stage production delights us with new musical numbers such as; ‘Here Right Now’, ‘Three Little Words’ ‘Are You a Believer’ and so on (lyrics by Bruce Joel Rubin / music and lyrics by Glen Ballard and Dave Stewart).  The actress, Rebekah Lowings, who plays Molly was simply superb. She had an absolutely fantastic voice, especially singing her version of ‘With You’, quite frankly it took our breath away. Moreover, the Subway Ghost’s (Lovonne Richards’) Act Two spoken word deliverance of ‘Focus’ was a very clever interpretation of the original filmic scene.  Of course however, the most memorable song of Ghost is and always will be the Righteous Brothers’ classic 1965 ‘Unchained Melody’. It was really beautiful moment actually in the stage production, because the famous sensual pottery scene from the film was reincarnated with Sam (Niall Sheehy) this time serenading Molly with his acoustic guitar. As with all the musicals me and my mum have been fortunate enough to see together, Ghost certainly did not disappoint. The entire audience were up on their feet at the end demonstrating a well deserved standing ovation. Incredible.

Saturday 20th April

On the Saturday morning, we had a stroll around the expansive Arndale shopping centre. Outside Exchange Square was a coca-cola truck, as part of the official Premier League Trophy Tour; we took full advantage of the freebie soft drinks on such a bright and sunny day.

We then visited the very near by Manchester Cathedral situated on Victoria Street, and photographed its gorgeous Perpendicular Gothic style architecture.

We afterwards rested our legs and quenched our thirst in the beer garden of a very quaint and dainty little pub establishment.

Then, we made our way to the close by Printworks entertainment centre, for fun at Treetops Adventure golf, and food at the Hard Rock cafe.

We had great fun playing crazy golf, mum was comical bless her, she kept hitting the ball the wrong way! We laughed together.

I absolutely adore Hard Rock Cafes (we visited one in Amsterdam 2017 as well). It is brilliant seeing all the rock memorabilia adorning the walls. We enjoyed some fruit mocktails and delicious scran 😛

Saturday evening we popped onto Manchester metrolink to MediaCityUK, to go to a Coronation Street walking tour. Mum loved this experience so much, she is a massive Coronation Street fan and has watched the soap for decades. It was fantastic capturing selfie photographs of us on the cobbles; outside the Kabin, Preston’s Petals, Roy’s Rolls etc and of course, in front of the iconic Rovers Return Inn.

Sunday 21st April

On the Easter Sunday morning, we first made our way to Manchester Art Gallery where we were intrigued to see its’ vast collection of Pre-Raphaelite Fine Art paintings, among other aesthetic pleasures. Halima Cassell’s ceramic works we liked also in particular.

Late afternoon on Easter Sunday, me and mum leisurely walked to Manchester Museum. We were both immensely impressed by the gigantic ‘Stan’ the Tyrannosaurus Rex (T-Rex) in their downstairs fossils gallery, as well as glossy taxidermy animals on the upper floors. An extremely fascinating visit.

Afterwards, we took the bus to Manchester Central Convention Complex for its exciting Easter funfair! Fun and food, all under one roof; the hotdogs were super yummy. We rode on the merry-go-round carousel a few times, and I won mum a little cute unicorn teddy on hook-a-duck. Good times.

We finished off our lovely theatre city break to Manchester capturing some sunny selfies in Piccadilly Gardens once more 🙂

Overall, an amazing trip, making wonderful memories in Manchester with mum 🙂 ‘Ghost – The Musical’ was dead good; Manchester’s well mint, we were mad fer it! Nar mither really! Top banana! 

That’s all folks, nar make us a brew? 😛

Further reading:

https://www.visitmanchester.com/ [Accessed 4th May 2019]

http://www.theprintworks.com/ [Accessed 4th May 2019]

https://coronationstreettour.co.uk/ [Accessed 4th May 2019]

http://manchesterartgallery.org/ [Accessed 4th May 2019]

https://www.museum.manchester.ac.uk/ [Accessed 4th May 2019]

https://www.easterfunfair.co.uk/ [Accessed 4th May 2019]

Thank you for viewing / reading!

Watch out for a new UnicornPostbox ”Psychedelic Elephant” art (pencil drawing / oil pastels) blog post coming soon!

Much love, Lauren xx

(Please visit my Facebook page ‘UnicornPostbox’ to ‘like’ and ‘follow’)

© 2019 Lauren Parr / http://www.unicornpostbox.wordpress.com